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In the first year of Gov. Ted Strickland's administration, overtime shot up 16 percent and the total state payroll rose $116 million, even though there were fewer employees than in 2006.

In the first year of Gov. Ted Strickland's administration, overtime shot up 16 percent and the total state payroll rose $116 million, even though there were fewer employees than in 2006.

Overtime topped $100 million for the first time in 2007, with 11 employees receiving at least $50,000 and 2,167 being paid $10,000 or more in overtime, according to a Dispatch computer analysis of payroll records supplied by the Ohio Department of Administrative Services.

Those rolling up the big overtime payments included state troopers protecting the governor, firefighters at Air National Guard bases, medical personnel at state hospitals and prisons, and computer experts already making more than $50 an hour.

At the same time, sick pay, a perpetual problem for state government, dropped by $5 million, or 7.5 percent.

State numbers crunchers were unable to fully explain the increases for last year, which ended with Strickland administration predictions of a budget shortfall of up to $1.9 billion by mid-2009.

Administrative Services spokesman Ron Sylvester said part of the jump resulted from the changeover in administrations, from Gov. Bob Taft to Strickland, the first Democratic governor in 16 years.

The majority of state employees also received a 3.5 percent raise last year, Sylvester said. Strickland froze the pay of about 3,400 higher-level staff members.

During the first three months of 2007 (Strickland took over in January), as many as 200 positions were temporarily "double-filled," Sylvester said, meaning that new employees were hired while the previous employees, many of them Republican appointees, were still on the payroll.

In addition, Sylvester said, overtime and payroll increased because employees put in thousands of hours responding to the stolen data tape, which contained sensitive information on more than 1.3 million individuals or businesses. Additional overtime --- paid at time and a half -- was racked up in the push to get a key component of the Ohio Administrative Knowledge System, a financial and record-keeping system, up and running by last year's July 1 deadline.

But more typically, the increases simply showed up across the board. For example, at the Ohio Department of Transportation, where overtime leapt 40 percent to $16 million, 362 employees got more than $10,000 each in overtime last year, compared with 235 in 2006. Records show that 11 of the top 20 overtime earners last year were engineers.

Department spokesman Scott Varner said the increase was largely a result of extra hours put in by snow-removal crews during a February 2007 blizzard and widespread flooding that occurred later in the year. Employees work 12-hour days in those situations, he said.

Even some highly paid employees, such as computer technicians, are often eligible for overtime pay, "a reflection of collective-bargaining agreements," Sylvester said.

"Most of the time it is less costly and more effective to pay overtime than to hire and train new staff that may only be needed for short periods of time," Administrative Services Director Hugh Quill said. "We are aware that some of our overtime cost is tied up in our higher-paid, technology-oriented employees. ... Managing great change in any organization of our size and complexity often comes with higher costs in the short term, with the reward of savings in the long run."

The state's top earner of overtime last year was a nurse. Melody Campbell, an employee at the Corrections Medical Center in Orient, was paid $81,495 in overtime, boosting her total pay above $160,000 -- well ahead of the $133,000 that Strickland was paid last year. Of the top 25 overtime-earners, 11 were prison or psychiatric nurses.

Prisons account for about 40 cents of every $1 the state spends on overtime.

Also on the top overtime list were four juvenile-corrections officers, three State Highway Patrol officers, two Bureau of Workers' Compensation analysts and a food-service worker at the Ohio Veterans Home who received $42,411 in overtime, which more than doubled her total pay.

Nine patrol troopers working executive-protection duty averaged more than $37,000 each in overtime last year, bringing their average annual pay to more than $100,000.

Youth Services employees recorded the highest average overtime per employee: $2,852.

Other findings from the Dispatch analysis:

• Men in the state work force fared better than women in average pay and overtime. Men were paid an average of $47,493 and received an average of $1,865 in overtime. Women were paid $42,869 and about half as much overtime as the men.

• In percentage terms, overtime pay jumped the most at the State Medical Board, where it almost tripled. Much of the increase was attributed to the large number of medical licenses that expire in odd-numbered years, including those of more than 9,500 massage therapists that were up for renewal in August.

• Overtime pay also came close to tripling in the Ohio National Guard under the adjutant general, whose air-base firefighters accounted for two-thirds of the $263,000 total. Because more than a dozen Guard firefighters were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan last year, those remaining had to work extra hours, said Mark Wayda, director of government and public affairs for the Ohio National Guard.

• Overall, the number of people earning total pay in six figures increased by nearly 16 percent as part of the state's $3.216 billion payroll. There were 71,171 full, part-time and seasonal employees outside education, 681 fewer than the previous year.

Officials said the state is beginning to get a handle on sick leave, which had been rising steadily for several years. The state instituted an employee health-management program and worked with human-resources personnel to better manage sick time, officials said.

ajohnson@dispatch.com

drowland@dispatch.com

At the Ohio Department of Transportation, where overtime rose 40 percent to $16 million, 362 employees got more than $10,000 each in overtime last year, compared with 235 in 2006.

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